Yeah, right, the little guy who lives inside your PC is
now fixing 'em, right? Well, yeah, sorta.... Actually,
the Internet is becoming a PC drive-through garage --
just surf through, pick up the software patch or
technical info, and surf away. Motive Communications, a
developer of software support systems, has opened a
self-diagnostic center for its customers after
determining that at least 30% of the tech support calls
they received were for simple problems that the customer
could fix themselves if given the proper walkthroughs.
As I write this, only Dell PowerEdge servers were
receiving Motive's self-repair support, but that will
change. For the rest of us, ServiceWare has opened a
self-help site at www.writeanswers.com/ that is
updated with daily info feeds from vendors such as
Microsoft and Lotus. And you can buy a small app from
Digital River called eBot that, after you load it on
your machine, automatically updates your apps with info
drawn from Digital River's huge database of upgrades and
fixes.